10 Fabulous Traffic Ideas for your Blog


Blogs are an incredibly popular ways to create an online presence for businesses today; they can be free to set up and you can start creating content almost immediately.
But, is there any point to having great content if no one is ever going to read it, so here are ten ideas to bring traffic in to your blog.

Remember that thousands of blogs have failed over the years; they are like running any type of business in that unless you are willing to put the time in and treat it seriously, you won’t be blogging long.

Most new bloggers really aren’t prepared for the work that goes into creating a successful one. Just building the blog doesn’t mean that people will necessary come to you. You pursue the audience and give them a reason to see what you have to say.

1.         Fresh Content – Apart from the fact that the major search engines love sites to have fresh content, no one wants to visit a blog day after day and see the same posts. You really need to update your blog content at least twice a week. This will be easier if you write several posts ahead of time and upload them at the appropriate times – which is what I do.

2.         Article Marketing – whilst traditional article marketing used to help rank your site better in Google isn’t worthwhile anymore, it is still useful to write some of your articles so that they can be posted on article directory site to help bring in more visitors.

3.         Social Networking – these sites are everywhere. Allowing visitors to share your post via social media (look at addthis.com) and promoting your posts via Tweets etc is a great viral way to help promote your posts.

4.         Viral Marketing – this is where you spread the word about your blog. Talk to friends, family and even strangers. Give out business cards that have your blog address on them.  Add it to your email signature, promote it within forums, talk about it and share it at every opportunity.

5.         Use RSS Feeds – RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication.” Readers can subscribe to your feed and get email updates when your new content is posted. It is an incredibly easy way for them to keep up with your blog.

6.         Submit Blog to Search Engines – a lot of people forget to do this, but submitting your blog to search engine directories will allow it to be ranked in search results. Search engines don’t necessary need you to do this anymore, but it is worth doing.  Please note that submitting your blog to search engines doesn’t automatically mean you’ll get a high ranking.

7.         Joining Forums – as a blogger you are a budding entrepreneur. Your main job is to market yourself and your blog. Become a member of related business forums, work at home forums and others to meet new people and share ideas. Remember that you should add a link to your blog in the signature line so others can easily find you.

8.         Visit other blogs – visit other blogs and leave positive comments; add a link back to your blog in your comments or there is also usually a “website” field that will link your name to your blog automatically.

9.         SEO Marketing – whatever you write, use relevant keywords. Ensure that you mention these keywords enough times throughout your blog posts but not too much; aim for about a five percent keyword density to help search engine rankings  Base your keywords on a research you do to find the most popular words used in search engines for your niche.  If you are unsure about keywords and how to get them into your content correctly then talk to a copywriter.

10.       Social Bookmarking – submitting your posts to social bookmarking sites allows others who are members of those sites that don’t know about your blog to visit you.

Using any of these ideas will start the traffic moving in your direction. It takes time but you will build the readership you want.

Killer Social Media Strategies


Social media allows businesses both large and small to have a lot of impact and power, here are just a small number of things that you can do.

1. Q&A's
Social media has been developed to engage with your potential customers and customers alike, but may businesses have no idea how to do this easily.  The best way is to hold scheduled Q&A sessions – let your Followers and Fans alike ask you anything they want about your business, products and services.  You may even quickly discover problem areas or new product ideas; this approach will also do wonders for your brand too.

2. Solve Problems
By doing regular searches for your brand name, product/services or market sector you will quickly discover people who are asking questions on Social Media platforms about things that you should be an expert in. 
Respond to them, answer their questions; don’t answer with your sales hat on unless the question specifically warrant you suggesting your companies services but try to answer with your customer services hat on.

In fact this approach goes beyond traditional customer services and you’ll be seen as active within the wider community; this is huge for your brand.

3. Promotions/Offers and Competitions
You will have lots of loyal Followers/Fans, and it’s nice if you can reward then from time to time for being there for you.  Give special offers, promote events, provide competitions – anything to further your engagement with your market/community.

Give value and you’ll have a Fan for life!

4. Value added links
If you are a business that just provides links to your homepage or your products and services pages then you are missing a huge trick; provide links to useful resources/news items (whether on your site or not); this will continue to add value to your brand and your wider community.

Work SMARTER, not harder!

Sneaky way to improve your Klout score

This is a little sneaky but it does the job!

Ok so you love Klout, you need to improve your score, to do this you know you need to get people to interact with you but you have no idea how to do it … here’s a great tip.

Simply ask questions 

Pick an account with a large following (Consumer brands are the best ones to pick because they know the importance of responding to Twitter users).

Ask a simple question (maybe where they are based, where can you buy their product, what is the link to their website, what is their customer services email or telephone number etc), it doesn’t really matter what it is, it just needs to be a simple question that will make the brand look like they are helping out a consumer of theirs.

Once you get a reply, as them another simple question immediately afterwards – you should get another quick reply, but Klout recognises this as a communication, and ENGAGEMENT and you’ll improve your score.

Note: There is no replacement for real engagement, use this tactic sparingly.

Getting more Twitter followers easily

Some simple tips for you to follow to help get more Twitter followers easily.
  • Post great content that people love and are interested in. 
  • Posting content on trending topics may get you a number of followers that are interested in those trending topics. 
  • Use a real photo of yourself might get you more Followers 
  • Your Profile is really important, so write it to attract the right followers 
  • Follow only the people who you want to follow you 
  • INTERACT with people that you want to Follow you. 
  • #FF #FollowFriday can help you get Followers from the people that you mention 
  • Can you start a Twitter Competition? This will always get you lots of new followers 
  • Try a Twitter Q&A session 
  • Use popular or trending #Hashtags
Good luck

Christmas Retail Branding!


Christmas has always been a time for brands to shine, but it seems that the 2012 festive period is somewhat different!

From last year I remember the Morissons ad with Brucie and Freddie; the John Lewis with the kid excited about giving his gift to his parents; Jamie Oliver cooking Sainburys food; Tescos had happy kids on a school stage; Iceland had Stacey Solomon driving home to her family; Argos had their aliens – and all the brands solidly had their respective promise that as a viewer we understood.

Proposition and brands are clearly identifiable; and this is important if they are going to attract lots of business from us shoppers.

Today is very different; John Lewis again went for the snowmen tearjerker and Argos have stuck with the aliens; but to be honest the rest of them have just merged into one brand/message/proposition!  Not sure what Littlesons, M&Burys and Bootalan are offering this year; I'm a very confused viewer and shopper!

Be really interesting to see who the retail winners and losers are this year!

Improving your Klout score


If you’re fixated by your Klout score then you have no doubt tweeted like crazy and got numerous Retweets, things are looking up as your Klout score slowly increase.
BUT you’ll find that when you hit a Klout of around 40 then this strategy of tweeting and gaining Retweets doesn’t help you anymore!

So you are keen to improve your Klout further, how do you do it?

There are a couple of things you now need to do, firstly you need get your Followers/Following ratio up; this means that you need to get incrementally more people following you without you following more people.

Secondly, you need to get more people to engage with you, not just Retweeting the stuff you put out but to actually respond to your stuff!

Do these two things are you’ll find your Klout score move up to the 50’s in no time.

What could a business learn from a beggar!

I was recently reading an article on Huffington Post about a beggar in Oklahoma that makes $60,000 (approx £37,000) a year on the streets.

Now, two things shocked me with this news item:
  1. It’s the 21st Century and we still have beggars on the streets in one of the most affluent countries on the planet 
  2. He earns more money (tax free) than some small businesses I know! 
This got me thinking two things really; firstly, this guy won’t be the only person that is begging and making an awful lot of cash from the process and secondly, what is this guy doing that we can learn from?

I always remember one very important tip from my early sales management days; at the time it was the most amazing thing ever heard and I knew that it was something that EVERY salesperson MUST DO to bring in the money. furthermore, I know for a fact that many of the so-called ‘experts’ in today’s sales community don’t do it!

Just ask for the sale. 

In the terms of our beggar in Oklahoma City he has one simple direct message where he asks for money (it's that simple) and people give him some, it's that easy.

How many sales people do you know who beat around the bush playing out some sort of sales ritual with their prospects in a never ending loop of 'will they/won't they buy it' (maybe you do it yourself!). The sales people that constantly contact me never fail to tell me how great their company is, or how fantastic their product is, they might mention how much cheaper or faster or simply better they or their product is than their nearest competitor, they leave the literature, direct me to the online demo, but they rarely ask for my business?

Based on experience I would suggest that far less than 10 percent of sales people actually ask for the sale, imagine the money they are leaving on the table, imagine how much extra revenue could be made if they just asked for that sale!
If our beggar in Oklahoma City can do it, I'm sure the average, educated sales person could do it too. Makes you think doesn't it!